


Lay Me Gently In The Cold Dark Earth

by plume_bob



Series: I'll Crawl Home To Her [2]
Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, post 5.11, very minor suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plume_bob/pseuds/plume_bob
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor comes in all bent out of shape, looking for the stolen phone. He’s not impressed. Peter throws it at him, “Catch,” and feels a little bit bad about it.</p><p>This guy saved his life. But, then, so did Carrie, and if she ever comes back from trying to get herself gassed he might throw something at her, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Me Gently In The Cold Dark Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to When My Time Comes Around; Quinn's POV from his hospital bed. Again, not exactly promo or time-frame compliant.

 

First time he wakes up—

Nah.

It’s a write off.

Tastes something black in his throat. Sees something gold, something shining. White and white and blue, beep-beep-beep.

And black. All black.

 

~

 

“Carrie?”

He’d thought—she was, he just _saw_ her, you don’t dream that bright in the midst of all that darkness.

“She’s not here, but she’ll be back.”

He’s heard that before, only—it’s him that’s usually gone by then.

 

~

 

Not this time, though. This time he isn’t going anywhere.

“Carrie figured it out, she went to the station.”

“ _What?_ ”

“She tried to tell me, and—” Silence; Peter wants to shake Saul right about now.

“How long?”

“I got a text fifteen minutes ago.”

She was on her own, is what Saul doesn’t need to say. Peter’s throat burns, feels like every pipe in him is scarred shut. In that moment, he could curse Saul all the way to hell. Himself, too, while he’s at it.

 _She’s always on her own_.

She wasn’t, though. She _wasn’t._

 

~

 

He swipes a porter’s phone and dials from memory.

He still has that memory, is what shocks him. Because cerebral hemorrhaging is nothing to sneeze at. But he dials, and it rings, and he thinks it’s right until—

“Um, hello?”

Maybe Peter’s brain is worse off than he thinks it is. “Who the fuck it this?

“I—this isn’t my phone,” says the woman, German accent. “A-a woman gave it to me and told me to send a message. And now the station is—”

“Yeah, I know, can you see the woman anywhere? Did you _see_ where she went?”

A fraught silence, and Peter feels nothing of the aches and breaks in him.

“She went down. She’s not here.”

He hangs up, phone clenched in his weak hand. They won’t stop shaking and it’s pissing him off. The TV, so much white noise at this point, is also pissing him off.

If they release the gas, there’ll be no Atropine to save Carrie by the skin of her teeth. If they don’t, she might be shot, captured.

 _Captured,_ and Peter’s stomach seizes and he doubles forwards over his raised knees. Willing down whatever hellish black crap lives in his body now but he can _taste_ it, right at the back of his throat, right where Carrie’s name sits like an invading foreign object.

He’s been told Carrie was the one who found him. Carrie and Astrid, together. He’d laugh, if there was room for that in him alongside everything else.

His hands shake some more. His head throbs, his spine rings, his chest weighs eight tons.

The nurse, Sahar, comes again to shove morphine on him but he gives her a look and she gives him a look and that’s that. He kinda likes her, at any rate, because she reacted to the news by immediately pulling out her phone.

But Peter’s thoughts are circular, weaving non-sequiturs that blind and clarify in equal turns. He can’t focus on one thing longer than a minute and then it’s something else, something else.

His kid might’ve seen him dying on the news and not even know that was his daddy.

Peter’s face all over every station, every paper, every web page, has blown all semblance of cover out the window.

When he was eight he fell from a rocky outlook down into a waterfall and almost drown and standing in that tank getting gassed to shit had felt a lot like that.

Qasim saved his life and maybe, just maybe, he’ll save all those others while he’s at it.

Carrie—back to Carrie, always back to Carrie—down there, figuring out what no other fucker had the brains to, just like always, and steamrolling into danger, _just like always_.

His head hurts. Perhaps, Peter’s got brain damage; it might be a comfort.

 

~

 

The doctor comes in all bent out of shape, looking for the stolen phone. He’s not impressed. Peter throws it at him, “Catch,” and feels a little bit bad about it.

This guy saved his life. But, then, so did Carrie, and if she ever comes back from hurling herself directly into the firing line he might throw something at her, too.

 

~

 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re difficult?” Sahar says, checking the machines. He got out of bed to piss, and he was _fine_ , but apparently that’s a crime around here.

“Only everyone I’ve ever met.”

Astrid used to tell him daily. Dar, too, but wordlessly, buying Peter food all the damn time because he thought him incapable of looking after himself.

“Add me to the long list, then.”

He huffs, and even that hurts. “You gonna get in trouble for letting me slip free?” he asks, because it suddenly occurs to him.

Sahar smiles sweetly. “Not if you keep your trap shut. How’s your head feel?”

“Like I downed three bottles of Cuervo.”

“That’s good,” she says and he’s mildly alarmed that she could dislike him _that_ much. “If you downed three bottles of Cuervo and lived to tell the tale, you can recover from this easy.”

He tips his head back, corner of his mouth curling up. His motor functions feel the slow side of normal, but they’re there. He clenches one hand into a fist and it goes.

“Can I ask you a question?” Sahar tentatively puts forth. “It’s not a nice question.”

“I think I can handle it.”

“Were you scared? In that tank, and before, y’know, when you were with them?”

Scared. It’s a concept so warped to him, he doesn’t feel qualified to talk about it. Knocked out and stuffed into the back of a van and he was scared, yeah, sure, but it’s a fear he’d wrangled a long time ago and there was shit to do, talk to Qasim, prevent the attack if he could; weak spots. All emotion is useful, powerful even, when it’s put to the right weak spot.

The tank was—indefinable. Knowing had been the worst part—

“Yeah, I was pretty scared.”

Right now, though, he is _petrified_. Actually petrified, in that all other kinds of mental function have frozen for it. The jihadists, the tank, none of it penetrates yet—though he knows it will, and won’t that be fun to process.

He feels iced over, a hellish limbo waiting game. This is the ninth circle, and the devil is his bunkmate.

Sahar looks up at the TV. “Nothing yet.” And then, with a sudden laugh, “Pretty scared. Like, putting out a spider. You people are crazy.”

“That’s also been said.”

“Carrie like this, too?”

She keeps asking about Carrie, and Peter can’t blame her. He’d heard Carrie’s voice from beneath a million leagues, and it’d been the damndest thing. Sahar thinks they’re—whatever. She always plays with her engagement ring when she asks.

He’s not sure he can talk about Carrie, though, with his armor stripped so far back.

“She’s worse,” he says lightly.

“How do you two put up with each other?”

_We never got the chance._

“Oh, y’know. She shoots me with a rifle, I ziptie her to the nearest solid object, the usual kinda stuff.”

Sahar has a dark sense of humor and she chuckles. “Sounds wild.”

“You’re not wrong about that.”

What he’d like to _try_ and articulate but can’t, is that he and Carrie just _aren’t_. They aren’t, they haven’t, and they probably won’t. Nothing has ever felt more impossible, and that includes stood in that tank trying to survive an assault of Sarin gas.

It doesn’t help that Carrie is a faraway dream right now, already dead as far as he knows; Schrödinger’s fucking person.

 _Shit_.

“Peter, hey,” Sahar prompts.

“Ahh,” he manages, at the tail end of a dramatic cough that hurts his bones. “M’good.”

Saul would’ve called if Carrie was—

Or would he? He knows Peter insidiously well, disturbing and guts-deep and silent, never spoken out loud. He looks at Peter with an edge, always, of laser-sharp awareness. He’d like to think Saul would quietly come by and just shove a pillow over his face instead.

And it’s not _that_ —well, it _is,_ but it’s more than that, the thing Saul understands. Peter would’ve _failed_ her. Failed Carrie. Failed his one selfish priority, the only thing that’s his to save. If Carrie’s out there in the world, then it’s okay. She carries a better Peter with her than the real one, a Peter Quinn worth protecting.

Carrie may or may not know, not _that_ , but Saul does. In some ways, they’re the same.

 

~

 

He’s weak, and therefor he gives into the urge to doze.

Only when there’s nobody around to tell him to, though.

He’s sinking into an unkind rest, the whole ward very quiet, when Sahar runs in like a crashing gong.

“Peter! It’s Mr. Beren—”

His legs are swung over the bed, phone in his hand, before she even finishes. Christ, he’s dizzy. He’s dizzy and straining to hear every single telling layer in Saul’s breathing.

Peter’s surprised he can even ask, “ _Saul_?”

“She’s okay.”

He presses a violently trembling hand over his mouth, can’t fucking speak so Saul speaks instead.

“The attack was averted, it’ll be all over the news soon enough but I wanted to let you know first.”

“And she’s okay,” Peter breathes, a double check.

“Absolutely fine. A fuckin’ hero.”

Peter sighs, long, hard and painful. “Yeah.”

He slumps forwards, elbow in his lap the only thing holding him upright. Saul’s still talking, about Peter resting up, about filling him in later, but Peter merely hums, hands the phone off to a grinning Sahar, and sits there quietly.

“Thank you, Mr. Berenson,” she says. “I’ll make sure he gets some rest now.”

Hah. Peter jerks with it. It’s actually funny, and it really hurts, hurts more for the hot helium rush of elation pouring all through him. Expanding all his insides, like he could take off.

“Y’know, you CIA pricks really know how to do drama.”

Peter snaps his head up—ow—because for a second he thinks Sahar is still talking to Saul, but she’s hung up already, and she’s looking at Peter a little hysterically, eyes bright. Looking how he feels.

He laughs, scrubbing both hands over and over his face because he doesn’t know what to do with this feeling.

Sahar’s eyes go brighter still. “He said Carrie was on her way here, by the way.”

The news reporter on the TV catches up with them, one finger on his earpiece and shouting the good news over, no doubt, his own rush of elation. Peter’s been unkind to these people in this past, assuming they’d love nothing more than a mass casualty attack just to have something to report about, but this guy has the uneven breathing of someone genuinely relieved.

_Carrie’s on her way._

Hits him like a fucking brick. Hits him like her hands unnecessarily all-fucking-over him with a bullet in his side.

He laughs again; he really, certainly does have brain damage.

 

~

 

Yeah, he remembers vividly, her face right there before he had a seizure and blacked out all over again.

Her voice had cracked, much like it does now, into little pieces all through her side of the conversation.

He’d know that sound anywhere and everywhere. He’d been at the reaper’s door and he’d known it.

She’s looking at him like a dead man, someone she’d buried a long time ago. He’s crawled out of a self-made grave again and again just to see that she’s okay, and every time she’s looked at him that exact same way.

“I can’t—can’t believe you’re alive. On the news, you—God.”

And there it is. And he can’t believe _she’s_ alive, either.

The things they do to each other.

He squeezes her hand. It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but it’s all he can do when there is so much that needs fixing.

“I’m sick of thinking you’re fucking dead, Quinn,” she tells him, sniffing.

_You and me both._

No. That’s for his rare visits to the agency appointed therapist, not here where it’s harder to make a joke of.

“Hussein said he’d never met someone who fought harder to stay alive,” Carrie says, like she fucking knows, like she’s right in his head.

“He’s a good man.”

A tear makes its way down Carrie’s face, and Peter can’t stand it anymore. She’s exhausted, she’s worn down the bone and hiding nothing. Peter’s the wrong kind of tired, the worst kind of _done_ , because it makes his heart beat quicker.

Her chair is as close to the bed as she can stuff it and he tugs on her hand , brings her in and makes a pillow for her at the top of his outstretched arm.

Carrie’s hand stays firmly in his over his chest like a breathing aid, a reminder to inhale.

“He said he found you on the river,” she says, like he knew she would. “About to drown yourself, apparently.”

“I had a million degree fever, give me a break. I hardly even remember it.”

Carrie huffs a single laugh, tickling against his collarbone where the hospital gown has ridden down. He doesn’t think for a second she’s amused, though.

“So that’s it?”

He looks away, out across the room with a swallow. Carrie’s hand untangles from his, shock of heat spreading around his jaw. The morphine is making him pliable, dammit, and making his insides heavy with a lead-hot warmth.

“Look at me, Quinn.”

She makes him, palm gently forceful and thumb running over his cheek, and he turns his head down where hers tips up, eye to eye and very close.

“I just wanted you to be safe,” he says softly.

Her mouth hardly moves, words mumbled, but he watches it, rapt. “You think I don’t want you to be safe?”

Peter crooks the arm she’s resting on, running his fingers into her hair. “I’m never safe, Carrie. We both know that.”

“You _wanted_ to be.” She sighs; he doesn’t know whether it’s weariness or the feel of his fingertips on her scalp. Either way, he did it to her. “What the hell happened?”

He panicked, is what happened. He’s a flighty son of a bitch, a rootless nothing. Even _he_ can’t trust a damn thing he wants.

He’s grounded now, though, that’s for fucking sure.

“I don’t know how to keep my feet on the ground,” he sort of thinks out loud. And then, quieter, “I should’ve said goodbye.”

Carrie tenses against him. He wonders how long, how bad she’s been waiting to hear that. He should’ve said _something_ ; it’ll never not eat away at him like rot, even now. Those first few months in Syria had been—worse than the tank, a million times over. He’d died there. Died and died and kept on going, just barely. Dug his own grave, Carrie Mathison’s name scrawled on the invitation.

“Well.” She swallows. “Count yourself tagged for the next few months, you’re not getting out of my sight.”

Peter raises his eyebrows. “The agency hiring babysitters, now?” And maybe that sounded harsh, too petulant, because her expression tightens.

“No.”

He knows what she means, her _meaning,_ but he’s slowly becoming doped and her hair feels like fine silk through the gaps in his fingers. How she shivers into it, so close he can _feel_ it. She’s always felt good, _like this_ good. Reactive and hard and soft, easy to read where it counts and difficult enough that he’s addicted to trying.

“Carrie—”

“Just—”

He tips down and she comes up, and her mouth is parted over his bottom lip with a damp little sound that he _feels_ right in the center of his chest. She kisses him there, and then at the corner, and then right where he opens up for her, gasping against, _into_ , his mouth.

He clutches into her hair with his fist, and her hand grips the back of his neck.

It hurts, but not like any kind of hurt up until this point. An ache, a knot so deep in him. Carrie’s urgent mouth twists it, turns him inside out.

She smears a kiss against his chin, his jaw, burying her face right in his throat at the jugular and he lets her.

When she breathes, it’s a moan, too.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” she says.

That’s a fucking relief. He presses into her hair, “Me neither.”

“I’m about to get, well, you’re not gonna like it.” She goes on regardless. “When I saw the video, it was. Brody hanging, Saul on the runway in Pakistan, my dad—I love you, Quinn. I don’t think you know, but I do.” She laughs, even though the ground is shaking. The tank, and Carrie watching, and Peter dying, and her thinking _that_ and him thinking the exact fucking same until he couldn’t think anymore. “I fell over. I literally toppled over onto my ass in the middle of a bar with you on the TV.”

“Drinking on the job?” he manages, ‘cause what the hell else can he say? Carrie’s not looking for an answer, here. She’s not looking for anything.

“I wish.”

Peter blinks, hard and dry. “Fuck, I’m tired.”

And he is, inside his head and all the way down.

“Then sleep,” Carrie says, mouth against his throat and fingers winding around his wrist; twin pulses under her even though there’s a heart monitor that’s been driving him slowly batshit for hours jagging up and down just beside the bed. “I’ll be right here.”

 _Waiting for you_.

She sits up, hair a mess from his fingers and her elbows on the bed. There’s a tiny split in her lip that Peter’s mouth popped back open and she licks at it absently.

“Are you okay?” he asks, thinking maybe he hasn’t, yet.

Carrie gives him a shrug and a half-smile. Her fingertips rub into his open palm. “Got a lot to think about.” Peter can’t stop looking at her, even with his eyes trying to close, and she huffs a laugh. “Go the fuck to sleep, Quinn.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking first.” He probably, _definitely_ , wouldn’t ask that under any normal circumstances.

“It’s stupid.”

“And?”

“I was thinking about that wig.” He’s tickled, and she pulls a face. “And that you need a haircut.”

“I do _not_ need a haircut,” he says with far more vigor than he’d thought he had left in him.

“Shh, just go to sleep.”

“If you even—”

She’s smirking, with her split lip and her face that’s seen a hell of a lot of shit today. He stops talking and narrows his eyes, because he won’t give her the satisfaction.

Narrowed eyes turn into closed eyes, a long sigh that, extraordinarily, does not hurt whatsoever.

“Don’t worry. You’re safe with me,” Carrie says, somewhere far away.

Her hand flattens against his palm, fingertips running up and down his fingers. He’s safe with her, she’s a fuckin’ hero.

 

 


End file.
